Every election season in the Eastern Cape sounds the same. The banners go up, the loudspeaker trucks arrive, and the promise comes again: better services and jobs.
Many of us could sing them with our eyes closed.
This time I put a question to my ward councillor, who is standing again as a candidate.
What happens when residents say, “If you don’t do this, we won’t vote for you”?
He did not dismiss the frustration. Residents, he said, had every right to demand service delivery, accountability and better living conditions, and no community should be expected to stay silent about its struggles.
His concern is what election season does to expectations.
An election, he said, did not change the laws, bylaws, budgets or administrative procedures that govern a municipality.
After five years in office, he understands how the system works and where its weaknesses lie.
He can promise to work harder, communicate better and fight for services, but he cannot honestly promise what the law does not allow.
He would rather give a resident a difficult truth than a promise he knows he cannot keep.
Much of this is hard to dispute. Budgets are finite, and a candidate who promises houses, tarred roads and jobs overnight is not being honest with voters.
But a resident who says “I won’t vote for you” is not threatening democracy.
Section 19 of the constitution protects the right to make free political choices, and a vote is conditional by nature.
If voters cannot withhold it over poor performance, elections become ceremonies instead of contests. Nor can “the law doesn’t allow it” carry an incumbent all the way.
Councillors help approve budgets, oversee the administration and shape the Integrated Development Plan, which must be built through public participation.
Many complaints, such as unattended faults and stalled projects, are questions of planning and oversight, not national legislation.
The anger is not abstract. The Eastern Cape has the highest official unemployment rate of any province in SA, at 47.5% in the second quarter of 2026, against 33.6% nationally.
The province lost 116,000 jobs in a year, and young graduates hold degrees but no work.
In Ugie, the clinic has been closed for renovations since October 2024 after the provincial health department failed to pay the contractor.
Patients queue outside a mobile clinic in the rain and heat.
In a nearby village, pensioners paid R50 per household in 2014 to build their own clinic, and its two rooms are still unfinished.
The auditor-general’s figures show where such failures begin. For 2024-25, only 39 of 257 municipalities achieved clean audits, and none of the eight metros did, including Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City.
Behind each finding is a clinic not finished, a water scheme that stopped or a bridge half-built.
Part of the explanation is who runs the local state. The State Capture Commission found that cadre deployment violates section 195 of the constitution, which requires appointments based on competence and fairness.
The ANC disputes the finding, and that debate is legitimate. But a resident with a dry tap needs a competent municipal manager, not a constitutional argument.
So I agree with the councillor that voters deserve hard truths, and they must flow in both directions.
Residents should hear that budgets are limited, grants are conditional and some backlogs will take years to clear.
In return, they are entitled to plain answers about where money went, why projects stalled and who is accountable.
Governments will point to real progress, and voters should weigh it.
The auditor-general noted green shoots this year, millions of households have been connected to electricity, and apartheid’s spatial legacy is real.
But 30 years of power also means 30 years of responsibility. Every candidate, incumbent or challenger, should be able to answer four things: what is within a councillor’s power, what was promised the last time and delivered, how a new commitment will be funded and by when, and what happens if they fail.
The councillor warned against replacing honest conversation with threats and unrealistic expectations.
But the greater danger to local democracy is disillusionment, the conclusion that nothing changes whoever wins, so there is no point voting.
Older voters loyal to the party of liberation deserve respect, not scorn.
The young carry no such debt and ask only what has been done for them lately. They will decide this election, if they register and vote.
Sibonise Mabengwana is a political commentator